from the quite-useful dept

A few years back, a patent attorney made a simple suggestion to me, asking that, whenever I write about patent lawsuits, that I include the US patent number on the patent within the text of the article. He explained that for those sued, one of the most useful things is to find other lawsuits regarding that patent, and it's actually not that easy, so having stories list the patent numbers becomes a big deal. In many cases, when companies are sued, their lawyer does a general search to see if the patent has been used in litigation before -- and it's that general Google Search, which is why the request was made to me to include patent numbers. However, for companies or individuals sued by patent holders, having a lawyer sit there and do a Google search can cost you an extra $500 to $700 per hour of lawyers' fees. Many lawyers have argued that the system needs to be much better.

Thankfully, the folks over at Patexia have recently launched a new feature on their site that makes it much easier to look up such things. For example, here are the Patexia results for lawsuits involving US Patent 6,857,067 which is held by Uniloc, who recently used it to sue X-Plane, Mojang and others. While, in that case, you can see all the recent lawsuits come from Uniloc (who could be searched via Pacer), it may not be as complex. But when patents get passed around a lot, following the trail isn't always so easy. No matter what, this seems like it could be a useful tool, especially for those sued by patent trolls.